January continues. As usual for the month, there’s one or two decent items this week, but nothing spectacular.
First, the DVD picks:
- 10 Things I Hate About You Vol. 1
- Amreeka
- Becker: The Complete Third Season
- The Brothers Bloom
- Bugs Bunny’s Cupid Capers
- Burning Plain
- Departures: Alex: Last year’s Academy Award Winner for Best Foreign Language Film.
- Downloading Nancy
- ER: The Complete Twelfth Season
- Fame
- Fame: Season Two
- Ghost in the Shell 2.0: Alex: As a reminder – the special featuers on this release are essentially identical to the original Manga Video DVD release, instead of the Japanese release of the movie, which had a new audio commentary with Mamoru Oshii. Again, we haven’t gotten an explanation from Manga Video, but the running theory is that the Japanese rightsholders wouldn’t let them use those special features.
- Halloween II (Theatrical Cut)
- Hidimari Sketch – Season 1
- The Hurt Locker
- I Can Do Bad All By Myself
- In The Loop
- Jon and Kate Plus Ei8ht: Season 5 – Big Changes
- Make it or Break it: Volume One Extended Edition
- Moon: Blaine: I’ve heard great things about this, but haven’t seen it yet myself.
- Naruto Shippuden Vol. 5
- The New Adventures of Black Beauty: Season One
- Onimasa: Alex: A Yakuza film
- Passing Strange
- Pezheads: The Movie
- Post Grad
- Robin Hood: Season Three
- Route 66: Season Three
- The Simpsons: The Complete Twentieth Season
- Superheroes
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Film Collection: Blaine: This includes all three live action movies and the CGI flick.
- Top Gear Season 10
- Top Gear Season 11
- Transformers: Season 2, Volume 2
- Tyler Perry’s House of Payne 5
- Wild Women of Wongo
- WWE – Tables, Ladders & Chairs 2009: Alex: The WWE’s new Tables, Ladders, and TLC match themed Pay-Per-View.
Now, the Blu-Ray picks:
- 8 1/2: Alex: This Fellini film was remade this year as the film “Nine”. Criterion Collection release
- Billy Jack
- The Brothers Bloom
- The Burning Plain
- Cliffhanger
- Fame: Extended Dance Edition
- Halloween II
- The Hurt Locker
- I Can Do Bad All By Myself
- In The Loop
- The Last Action Hero: Blaine: The movie critic in me says “ignore this because it sucked.” The novelty collector in me says “pick it up because it was the first movie ever released with digital sound, using SDDS before Jurassic Park popularized DTS technology.”
- The Matrix
- Moon
- Post Grad
- The Simpsons: The Complete Twentieth Season
Finally, the picks of the week. Alex says, “I recommend waiting until next week, as there isn’t anything particularly notable here that I’ve seen.” Blaine says, “Ditto. Looking ahead, there’s nothing that truly grabs my attention until February.”
The Simpsons Season 20? But but but… didn’t they just skip like 9 seasons?…
It looks like they’re doing the “Frasier” thing where they release the most recent seasons annually while running another schedule to release the older library. Season 12 hit last August, and I’ve yet to hear a date for season 13.
They’ve never done this before with The Simpsons… I’m going to assume it’s a 20th Anniversary thing.
The car lover in me wants to go out and pick up Top Gear, and I highly recommend it to anyone with even the slightest interest in them. Top Gear isn’t your usual automotive magazine show, sure they review cars, but they also have sections like “Star in a Reasonably Priced Car” and their anonymous driver, The Stig. Where’s Eldhrin? I need an actual Brit in here to extol the virtues of Jeremy Clarkson!
Also Last Action Hero is worth owning simply for “Too bhee oar naht too bhee?” – lights cigar with flame thrower – “Naht too bhee!”. Best Hamlet adaptation ever!
As to the other movies, I attempted to seen Moon twice and Hurt Locker once, but all three showings I tried to go to were sold out (a common problem with going to smaller independent venues with people who don’t understand that “limited seating” means “show up early” not “get there 5 minutes beforehand”). There’s a lot of Oscar buzz for Hurt Locker, and I like Sam Rockwell, so I’m going to try to hunt down both of them.
I suppose Schwarzenegger doing Hamlet is as close to the original Klingon as we’re gonna get.